Pedigree sheep sold for £367k!!!!! Any farmers about to help me understand why?!

[FusionChefGeoff]

I've read the article twice and watched the video and I get that this is a 'perfect' specimen that will hopefully go on to create other perfect sheep across the region by spending the next xxx months of his life on a touring shag-a-thon

But how do the farmers make their money back??? Is it particularly special wool?? Premium quality meat?? I just don't get how they turn that investment back into cold hard cash at the end of the process and why a sheep costing, oh I don't know, £200 couldn't do the same job!!

news.sky.com/story/worlds-most-expensive-sheep-sells-for-367-500-at-auction-12058858

Sales of semen and artificial insemination services are a huge and valuable part of the agricultural industry. You've answered your own question really. This sheep probably had the best scores seen in quite a while and that future offspring pribably will as well, hence the price.

Yeah, AI is huge in agriculture all over the world. Watch 'This Farming Life' on BBC 2 - there's a chap with Limousin cattle who sells his bulls' sperm and it's a massive part of their income.

Tbf he is a very handsome sheep

As pp said it’ll be selling semen. He’ll also get about 50 perfect pedigree ewes in lamb. They also implant embryos in other sheep. The offnspring should be perfect but may not be. They’ll be hoping to get high prices for any off spring.
He fetched a lot of money because texel are a commercial breed, many breeds of sheep are rare breeds and don’t fetch as much money.

There are a tiny small group of farmers who have income from elsewhere (big windfarms etc) who engage in a trade of sheep at vastly and arbitrarily inflated prices, the sheep go round and round a very small group of people who have decided that they are worth a couple of extra noughts on the end.

It is in no way representative of normal sheep farming. If that sheep was put on a hook tomorrow it would be worth about £200 maximum.

Normal farmers get really pissed off because they often live hand-to-mouth and these clowns give the public the perception that all farmers are loaded.

I would.
If I was ewe.

He must be pretty exceptional really mustnt he? (Probably the envy of loads of blokes .As he has been bought for his semen ,and is due to have lots of fun with his different lady friends, if ewe see what I mean Sorry!)I think that lots of us who are not farmers would struggle to see the logistics of this really!

He is just sperms and genes really!

The money was paid by a consortium, one of whom admitted it was an obscene amount of money, and agreed when the interviewer commented that its a rich man's game, unrepresentative of farming in general. That's why it is news in the first place.

I had thought he was a handsome chap too.

But there must, at some point, be an end consumer product otherwise what would be the point of just having clocks of perfect sheep to look at?!

I think they are probably going to be eating sheep as the end product i can't see farmers have fields of fabulous sheep!

He has got a super pair of balls to be fair

A similar sheep sold up here yesterday for £35k so your golden balls sheep wouldn't have to make many babies to get his money back.

But it feels like a massive agricultural ponzi / MLM!! You just sell golden balls sheep for more golden balls sheep. What's the actual product?? Wool??? Meat???

I just can't get my head around the economics.

Good genetics means better yields on lambs down the line (they gain weight quickly and don't need masses of feed to do it) . They're also less likely to have conformation defects that would affect how well they produce (like bad udders on breeding ewes).

The ram lambs he produces will probably be sold as breeding animals (rather than going for meat) and the ewes kept as breeding stock.

@FusionChefGeoff

But it feels like a massive agricultural ponzi / MLM!! You just sell golden balls sheep for more golden balls sheep. What's the actual product?? Wool??? Meat???

I just can't get my head around the economics.

Breeding stock, and a few generations down, meat animals.

@QuestionableMouse thank you so much - those points have helped to quantify what you actually get for your super sperm. Plus the post above about 'show off' trading and it's starting to make a bit more sense

He is nice and square and masculine looking.

They need to get him in the Craggy Island 'King of the Sheep' competition. He'd be a shoo-in, Chris wouldn't stand a chance

It all sounds a bit 'tulip bulb bubble' to me 😳

(Missing the point a bit) the end product with Texel sheep in particular is the meat - they grow bigger muscles and less fat than other breeds.
The wool is just middling quality.

It is exactly that heffalooomia.

@Permanentlypuzzled

I would. If I was ewe.

😂😂